Diplomacy after the Arab uprisings

Israel, West must see new regional Islamic leaderships as they really are, not as what they hope them to be

Writing for a CNBC website on December 8 about the Arab uprisings of 2011,
former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain made a stunning revelation about
one of the key leaders who has risen in the Libyan power structure after the
fall of Muammar Gaddafi, Abdul Hakim Belhadj. According to Aznar, Belhadj
was one of the suspects involved in the Madrid train bombing of 2004, that left
192 people dead and over 2,000 wounded.

Moreover, other noted Islamists
were a part of the new Libyan leadership, like Sheikh Ali Salibi, whom the
Washington Post this month labeled as "the likely architect of the new Libya."
Salibi lived for many years in exile in Qatar, where he was a close associate of
Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual head of the global Muslim
Brotherhood.

Did anyone know any of this earlier?

The story of Belhadj is
only one item in a much broader trend in 2011 that publicists liked to call "the
Arab spring." However, the fall of the old regimes in Tunisia, Libya, and in
Egypt led to their replacement with Islamist parties associated in one way or
another with the Muslim Brotherhood. According to his biographer, the
Tunisian Islamist leader, Rached Ghannouchi acquired a world view, influenced by
the writings of Muslim Brotherhood theorists like Sayyed Qutb. Looking at these
developments, a Saudi commentator in al-Sharq al-Awsat renamed this region-wide
revolution the "Muslim Brotherhood Spring."

One year of these historic changes
began to occur, it is clear that they pose a number of challenges for Western
diplomacy and perhaps even illustrate some of its most glaring flaws in the past
year. They will have direct implications for Israeli diplomacy in
2012.

UNDERSTANDING THE NEW ELITES

Given that movements that were linked
to the Muslim Brotherhood were on the ascendancy, the most fundamental question
was whether leaders in the West understood what this organization
represented. At the beginning of February 2011, the US Director of
National Intelligence, James Clapper, appeared before the Intelligence Committee
of the US House of Representatives. Since the re-organization of America's
intelligence structure over the last decade, Clapper is the one who briefs
President Barack Obama about what the key intelligence agencies are
thinking.

Asked about the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood posed,
Clapper answered that in Egypt it was a "heterogeneous group" that was "largely
secular," adding that it "eschewed violence." Yet less than three months earlier
on December 23, 2010, its "Supreme Guide" in Egypt, Muhammad Badi, provided a
clear sense of the organization's thinking when he issued one of his weekly
messages, albeit in Arabic, on the Muslim Brotherhood website, Ikhwanonline.
With respect to Israel, he wrote "the jihad for the return of the land is an
obligatory commandment incumbent on the entire Arab and Islamic nation."

Clapper's spokesman later corrected his remarks on his website. But his answer
nonetheless reflected a trend in the thinking on the part of part of the foreign
policy establishments in the US and in Britain, which saw the Muslim Brotherhood
as a moderating force and not as the militant movement, in which Khalid Shaikh
Muhammad, the mastermind of 9/11 and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current head of al-
Qaeda, grew.

This tendency continues. For example, on December 7,
Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, entitled "Joining a
Dinner in a Muslim Brotherhood Home." The article sought to reassure readers
about the organization's intentions. Then, on December 10, the chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator John Kerry (DMass.) met with three
leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in
Egypt. He was accompanied by the US ambassador to Egypt, Anne
Paterson.

DID THE West understand the movement that was rising and that
they were tip-toing to embrace? The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by an
Egyptian schoolteacher, Hasan al-Banna, whose ideology still influences its
adherents through his writings which appear on websites in multiple
languages. Al-Banna wrote in the interwar period that the Islamic flag
must again be raised in those lands that harbored Islam in the past: "Thus
Andalusia (Spain), Sicily, the Balkans, the Italian coast, as well as the
islands of the Mediterranean, are all Muslim colonies, and they must return to
the embrace of Islam." He added that "It is our right to bring back the glories
of the Islamic Empire."

It is noteworthy that Muhammad Badi' frequently cites
al-Banna's ideas and asserted this year that his movement was dedicated to the
views that he expressed. "without any doubt or obfuscation." Indeed, al-Banna's
ideas were also echoed by Badie's predecessor, Muhammad Akef, who declared in
2004 "his complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America" though he
added the caveat that Westerners would join Islam by conviction. Prior to
9/11. The Muslim Brotherhood's Londonbased publication, Risalat al-Ikhwan,
featured on its masthead the slogan: "Our mission: world domination."

THE
PRACTICAL IMPACT OF THE NEW ISLAMIST REGIMES

What are the practical implications
of the rise of regimes tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, which back these kinds of
ideologies? The first time a Muslim Brotherhood regime ruled an Arab state was
the early 1990's, when Sudan was led by Hasan Turabi. There were two
features of Sudanese policy at the time. First, Sudan hosted some of the worst
terrorist organizations, like Hamas, which was permitted to set up training
camps on Sudanese soil. Prior to 1995, when he arrived in Afghanistan, Sudan was
where Osama bin Laden set up his principle base of operations.

Second,
Turabi created a strategic alliance with Iran, which dispatched its
Revolutionary Guards to Port Sudan to establish a naval base along the Red
Sea.

Today there are different views inside the Muslim Brotherhood about
whether it should be tied to Iran. As a result of the 2006 Second Lebanon War,
many members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt advocated improved ties with
Iran. Today, with Iran supporting Bashar Assad's war on the Syrian opposition,
which includes a large number of Muslim Brotherhood members, anti-Iranian
sentiments have arisen, along with greater identification with Turkey. But
should Iran militarily become the dominant power in the region during the years
ahead then the Muslim Brotherhood will undoubtedly move in that
direction.

THE CHALLENGE FOR THE WEST AND ISRAEL

Despite the ideological
orientation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the new leaders taking power in the
months ahead will seek cooperation with the West in the short term, given their
first priority will be for their states to economically recover. Egypt, for
example will need tourism and foreign investments.

This not only reduces
the risks of armed conflict, but it also hands the US and Europe a great deal of
leverage. Assuming the West will seek ties with many of these new regimes, it
must not embrace them unconditionally.

Take the case of Hamas, which is
the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Quartet has insisted that
before it agrees to talk to Hamas, the latter must renounce terrorism, accept
all past agreements, and accept Israel's right to exist. In other words, Western
diplomacy introduced certain standards that must be met by Hamas, before it can
be accepted as a legitimate diplomatic interlocutor. These standards
should equally be introduced when considering relations with regimes that have a
Muslim Brotherhood component.

With respect to Israel, it must exercise
extreme caution in the period ahead. No one can guarantee that half the regimes
surrounding it will even be there in a few years. Traditional Israeli security
interests since the days of Yitzhak Rabin, like preserving control of the Jordan
Valley defense line, acquire greater importance when regimes cannot be relied
upon in the future as in the past to stem the freedom of movement of terrorist
organizations armed with the most advanced weapons that are now flooding the
market. This is all the more the case when Iran is exploiting these regional
vulnerabilities, to help its proxy forces around Israel.

NOT A TWITTER
REVOLUTION

The Arab uprisings initially appeared as a youthful and idealistic
movement to defeat tyranny and spread democracy. But those who began these
movements, armed with the latest social media, soon gave way to those who used
far more effectively the main force for political mobilization: the mosque. It
came as no surprise that the momentum against the old regimes of the Middle East
gained strength on Fridays, when the mosques were full. This phenomenon
led to the emergence of an Islamist winter.

Israel, like its allies, must
gain an accurate picture of the new world that is arising around it. The
fragmentation of neighboring states is a possibility that Israel will need to
consider. Regardless, the West also needs to know who it is dealing with and not
rely on broad-brushed characterizations about its new Middle Eastern partners
that have not been thought through, but fit well into pre-conceived ideological
positions that are simply untrue.

The writer is the president of the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and served as Israel's ambassador to
the United Nations, 1997-1999.